Things by me

Far be it for me to make any sort of appalling “new year new product” sort of references, particularly given that there is no such thing, to be quite frank, as a “new” product from Ordinal Enterprises - every piece of frippery that you see emerging has usually been loitering unreleased in my mind and inventory for months and occasionally, for instance in the case of the Swordstick, for over a year. Though never over two years, I believe.

An Idea bubbles to the surface of the peculiar caffeinated swamp of my mind, there is a brief flurry of activity, it approaches finality: and then something or other intervenes, or I spend several months changing the colour of a texture between two imperceptibly different shades, or I set myself a necessary task for its improvement before release which I clearly do not have the time to do and thus can avoid without personal guilt (unless I look too hard into my own motivations). I am led to believe that I am not the only Artisan with these Issues, and I am engaging on a Scientific Regimen of Mental Exercise in an attempt to restrict it in the Future, or at least I will be once I create the proper Folder Structure to file my exercise notes in.

In the meantime, I do actually have a product that I would like to announce - the Ordinal Howdah Pistol - and as is common in this day and age, it has its own Demonstrative Cinema, though I shall place it in the Extended Portion of this journal entry since I dislike the aesthetic effect of numerous of the things on my Front Page.

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Please do also see other appropriate pictures.

(L$200, nomod/copy/notrans though humbugs may be given away, if you are interested in such details)

* My Caledon Shop
* ShopOnRez
* SLX

The Ordinal Galvanic Swordstick from Ordinal Malaprop on Vimeo.

Goodness! Three of the things on one front page! Excessive, I would say.

A quick note to announce the current availability of, at long last, the Ordinal Galvanic Swordstick:

(this is the only video I have at the moment, but I shall be doing a proper one)

[draft] Recharge Galvanic Swordstick, zooming out from Ordinal Malaprop on Vimeo.

and also a little thing that I was working on recently, the Ordinal Automatic “Flick”-Knife:

The Ordinal Automatic “Flick”-Knife from Ordinal Malaprop on Vimeo.

Available from:

• My shop in Caledon
• ShopOnRez
• SLX

For the next few hours, the Swordstick will be available for L$50 less than usual (i.e. L$350 in total) in my Caledon shop, but I shall be changing this tomorrow morning, be warned. (Please ignore the price on the box there.) Edit: too late!

I must say that we have not had a Good, Old-Fashioned, Update-Related Scripting Function Break for some considerable length of time, and it is good to see that Tradition is re-establishing itself with the most recent “Rolling Restart”.

I had been considering the announcement of a small product that I had produced, a simpler variant of my as-yet-unreleased-and-generally-exceptionally-tardy Galvanic Swordstick designed for use with Rifkind Hapsburg’s “En Garde” game. Whilst I have been both busy and distracted recently, I was charmed by En Garde, which combines simplicity and depth most pleasingly. The game allows the use of alternative weaponry to the standard épée, more as an Especial Effect than anything else as they will only give one an advantage in terms of Fashion, and I tinkered with the Swordstick for a little while, adding a few animations and such for good effect, to make it compatible.

Whilst I was absent over the weekend of En Garde’s release (engaging in a business in Europe of which it is best not to speak) and was forced to rush the crafting somewhat, I put the En Garde Swordstick up for sale on ShopOnRez, and also in a little box at the main En Garde stadium, for L$50, with the promise of adding a few more features in future days and weeks.

Unfortunately I discover today that a particular, and at first glance minor, use of a particular scripting has been disabled - the ability to change the position of a linked avatar using llSetLinkPrimitiveParams. Reactions to that previous sentence I would suspect to be one of:

1. “Pardon?”
2. “Why would that matter?”
3. “OUTRAGEOUS! THIS IS AN UTTER DISGRACE AND I DEMAND SATISFACTION!”

For those responding in manner number One, I should explain that llSetLinkPrimitiveParams is a very useful little function allowing a script to change an awful lot of the details of a Prim that is linked into an Object - anything from its position through its type and sculpt texture to whether it emits light or not. In the past one was forced to use a subscript in that particular prim to change these things, and instruct it via a Link Message, but being able to do this from a central script is far more efficient and convenient.

For those responding in manner number Two, I should point out that, as most scripters will be aware, when an Avatar sits upon an Object, said Avatar is actually linked into that object much as any other prim and may be treated as one as far as Scripts are concerned - which is why the changed event triggers with CHANGED_LINK should someone sit on something, a Vehicle may only be 31 primitives including passengers, and so on. One may find the link number of the avatar (a simple loop through the prims suffices here, checking their names and keys) and then use llSetLinkPrimitiveParams to move them around, which otherwise is completely impossible. The use of llSitTarget defines where an Avatar first appears when initially sitting down on something, but changing it does not affect their position after that unless they stand up and sit down again.

(I will add a note of reassurance at this point that it is not possible to use said function to change other parameters of an avatar, merely its position. No script will be able to turn a hapless sitter into a torus.)

This function is widely used these days for all sorts of purposes. I myself have used it to adjust someone’s posed position when standing on a vehicle according to their height, so that their feet do not go through the floor and they do not appear to be hovering in mid-air; it is also used in different types of furniture, and in the case of Mr Habsburg’s En Garde, it is required to move the players back and forward as they engage in their swordplay. Clearly its removal is not cricket.

Why, though, one might ask, would this be removed at all? It appears that some sort of exploitable aspect existed which could be used to crash Sims, clearly something that no right-minded person would desire to remain. However, I wager that it is not at all impossible to restore the useful part of this function.

For those responding immediately in manner number Three, or those who have taken an interest on account of the preceding paragraphs, I humbly suggest that you visit the Jira Page “[#SVC-750] Avatar sitting on a prim no longer able to be manipulated with llSetLinkPrimitiveParams” and therein vote for the matter to be resolved. I am sure that it will be mere moments until we are all content once more; Mr or Ms Soft Linden has already stated that

There’s no plan for this to be permanent, and I’m asking for this functionality to be added to the test plan for future releases. (I’m bothered too - it broke some of my furniture!)

Well quite.

I should not finish this piece without at least mentioning that certain New And Improved Laws Of Physics are currently available for - and definitely requiring of - thorough testing within the parallel world known as the “Beta Grid”, but I dare not actually name them lest this cause them to disappear into the mists for another hundred years.

Well, I did say that I would release the thing, and so I have. In practice I decided to charge the princely sum of L$0 for it, including two sets of appropriate official flags; anyone wishing to leave a donation to offset my Uploading Charges is more than welcome, but I dare say they will not bankrupt me.

The Semaphore Animation Device is available from my Caledon shop of course, and also from ShopOnRez. (I am afraid that I do not have the patience these days to list items on SLExchange, certainly not ones from which I gain no monetary reward.)

A lengthy page of instructions is available for the benefit of insomniacs, and for those who are still not asleep, the main script itself is also viewable.

The item itself is not transferrable. Whilst regular readers will be aware that I am not the most assiduous in pursuing Resellers of my Free Items, counting it as one of the consequences of releasing items that are both Copiable and Transferrable, that is not to say that I like it when some reprobate grabs things which I set out and re-packages them as part of some godawful “Business In A Box”. In actual fact I do not object too much if a New Resident decides to scour the Grid for free items for which he or she may con some Even Newer Resident out of a few coppers - at least some effort goes into that practice, and it may be said that they perform a service - but the industrial reselling of Free Items is something which annoys me somewhat.

Furthermore, this morning, when I approached someone in their appallingly-textured shop and politely requested that they cease selling my Grid Crash Protection Box for monetary gain (I have no illusions that such action is technically punishable by what Laws of the Land exist, very little is, but as a Free Citizen I am quite at liberty to make that sort of request with ethical justification, particularly as there are clear notices indicating that these things are Not For Resale) I was treated to a dull little lecture about how “we don’t own anything therefore I can sell anything” and how I should read the Terms Of Service, as if I had not read them enough times to be able to repeat them verbatim.

This annoyed me, even though said seller did in the end remove my products - apparently customers had been complaining that the Grid Crash Protection Box did not actually protect them! perish the thought - and thus I am disinclined at this time to offer copiable and transferrable items, even though many fine folk would find this convenient.

I do apologise for this tangent.

Hello World - in Semaphore from Ordinal Malaprop on Vimeo.

Well, that is really just a title to grab Attention, but I have been this evening working on a script which translates Letters and Numbers into the waving of Semaphore Flags (in the above case, in the Oscar pattern). The message sent there should be fairly easily deciphered. I think that it is all correct, but to be quite frank, I cannot myself easily decipher Semaphore, thus I may have missed a detail.

The script, however, will interpret anything said on channel 9 into a series of such gestures, and one is advised to have Flags or Beacons or some such in hand so that onlookers may more easily receive the signal. Given sufficient time, I shall post the script here for general consumption. (I shall also provide a set of flags and the scripted attachment for sale at a very small cost, in order to recoup my uploading expenses for the Animations and such.)

Addition: Please see my following post for details of how to obtain the thing.

At last, I have had the Breathing Space to release the Ordinal Mechanical Dragonfly Wings for public sale! They are now available at my Caledon shop, for a limited time at the exceptionally low price of L$200. (Tomorrow, I will put them up to a more reasonable price.) Additional: it is now tomorrow, and they are now L$300. Please see the left hand side of this particular Journal for the location of my Shop, if you were not already aware of it.

They may be also be found for purchase or gift here on ShopOnRez. I would advise anyone wishing to send any as a gift to use this service - whilst I could develop and engineer an entire gifting system for each of my products, I do not plan to do so, and I do not plan to release them as Transferrable either, as that would invalidate the Update System that I use and put customers at the Mercy of a Cruel Grid. (And one would not be able to place copies in different Outfits, either.)

I have been attempting to put the final touches to my Mechanical Dragonfly Wings, which I find are frequently admired, yet I still possess my usual level of indecision and would therefore entreat any with an Opinion on the Use of Flight Enhancement Devices to leave their opinion herein. Though, please, if I then do not concur, do not be offended, it is likely that I am merely Wrong.

I have posted before on the things, and if any reminding is required, here is a little more illustrative cinema:

Low-altitude dragonfly wing testing from Ordinal Malaprop and Vimeo.

What concerns me is the detail of the enhancement to Flight. I wish to pare this down to the most basic, useful functions, and have the wearer free from having to use Irritating Blue Menus and Obscure Magic Words as much as possible.

In my own experience I have two main needs when Aviating:

1. Slow, careful maneuvering about;
2. Rapid dashes of speed, coming to a dead stop.

These two needs rarely coincide, but I do wish to be able to satisfy either without having to negotiate my way through various buttons and such. With this in mind I currently have the Dragonfly Wings behaving in the following manner: as standard, one moves no faster than if one was not wearing them, but when a “double-tap” is employed (pressing one’s movement control twice in rapid succession) there is an immediate “surge”, with a consistent impulse as long as said control is not released. When it is released, the wings bring the wearer to a dead stop immediately. The intensity of this surge is configurable via the dreaded Dialog Box, and can be turned off entirely.

As well as this the wings, in either state, will support one above the mark of Seventy-Two Metres’ Altitude, beyond which one naturally begins to fall. This is actually one of the more irritating experiences of flight, particularly in environments such as Caledon SteamCity where one is very frequently above that point without realising.

My question is: would this be sufficient? What more do people want? I am not here in the business of providing a solution to every movement need, but there may be some entirely obvious feature which is absolutely essential that I have not addressed. Granted that I am reasonably sure about my own use here, but really, if everyone else on the grid takes another feature for granted and I do not provide it, I would be being remiss.

Incidentally, for these recordings I use a simple HUD attachment which fixes the camera in whatever position it is currently in, when touched, and releases it when touched again. I find it most useful, and hereby provide it for general consumption by the curious - Fix camera on touch.

I feel obliged to mention the existence of a new version of one of the Free Devices that I provide which has proven to be of Enormous Popularity. Really, it is not a complex thing, but may be of use to some.

Upon the suggestion of Ms Ariel Miranda, I added the ability for the “Freebie Giver” to display an Illustration of the particular “Freebie” that is being dispensed. This is very easy to manage - one simply puts a texture into the thing with the same name as the free item, only with ” pic” appended to it. Thus if I wished to have an illustration for an object known as “Wallflower”, I would also place into the dispenser a texture called “Wallflower pic”.

This texture will not be dispensed individually, but other textures can be. In fact one can have a preview texture for another texture. If there are no appropriate textures in the item, a default one is displayed, the exact identity of which may be Re-Configured fairly simply.

Oh - as well as this, any actual textures in the giver will now appear on the front face as well when selected, so that folk might see what exactly it is they might obtain for free.

A basic effort, but perhaps of interest to those learning the Scripting Arts, in any case. The item may be obtained from ShopOnRez, and it will shortly be in my Caledon Shop. You may see the script directly here.

I have spent quite a lot of time tinkering with this thing and thus, you should buy it immediately.

There can be few Engineers, Blacksmiths, Salvage Experts, Artists, Pirates, Safe-Crackers and so on who have not, at one time or another, wished that they had a portable yet effective solution to the problem of being required to cut through a Large Metal Plate Of Some Sort. Ordinal Enterprises, as part of its growing industrial tool selection, wishes to provide a possible answer in these instances - the Ordinal Cutting Torch!

This portable, adjustable device allows for the cutting of numerous different types of substance without being tied to bulky cylinders. Move inside the bowels of an enormous malevolent automaton, or amongst the boilers of a mighty aerial battleship, safe in the knowledge that you will be able to slice through solid steel at a moment’s notice! The most Advanced Compression Technologies employed allow the portable cylinders to last for a surprising amount of time, and well-oiled quick-release catchs and springs assure that one is able to replace them for fresh ones in only three seconds!

(It should also be mentioned that, whilst the Cutting Torch is not designed as a weapon per se, should one encounter any Clockwork Antibodies or Meddling and Aggressive Sailors, they would be extremely ill-advised to get in the way of the Torch’s flame.)

FEATURES

Intricate design
Particle and hardware light effects
Multiple custom sounds and animations, including safety typing AO
HUD control with gas supply indicator and touch commands
Compatibility with damage and combat systems

TO SEE MORE

Gallery of pictures on Flickr
Demonstration film on Vimeo

AVAILABLE FROM

Caledon (100,59)
SLExchange
SLBoutique

Ordinal Cutting Torch - final(ish) from Ordinal Malaprop on Vimeo

Much as I dislike the whole process of boxing things up and making advertisements, I would like to announce that the Ordinal Knife-Pistol is now officially for sale at my Caledon shop, and soon to be on SLX and SLB. The previous entry has more pictures, and I suppose that at some point I will make some sort of video as well.

Incidentally, I cannot remember whether I mentioned it before, but I have created a group called “Ordinal Enterprises Customers” for this sort of announcement, as well as the announcement of any other events or special offers or whatnot. If you are interested in my nonsense for any reason I would encourage you to join.

If you wish to see the full release notes, by all means read on (and if you do not, by all means don’t).

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